Italian court legally recognizes three parents for one child

In a landmark ruling, an Italian court has legally recognized three adults as the parents of a four-year-old child, including a man who has no biological relation to the boy.

Key Takeaways:

• An Italian appeals court has recognized three parents for a four-year-old who was born in Germany to a man and a woman who were close friends.

• The man's husband, who is a citizen of both Germany and Italy, adopted the boy in Germany and then sought to adopt him under Italian law as well.

• For the first time, Italy has recognized a three-parent family, opening the door to changes in how the nation approaches same-sex couples and parental rights.

The Details:

The little boy, who lives in Germany with his biological father and his father's husband, now has three legal parents. The boy was born to the biological mother and father, who were close friends, in Germany, potentially while the man was already in a relationship with his husband. The father's husband is a citizen of both Germany and Italy. He legally adopted the boy under German law and then attempted to adopt him in Italy as well.

Suspecting that an illegal foreign surrogacy had been carried out, an Italian authority rejected that application. The decision was appealed, and a court overturned the rejection, finding that surrogacy was not involved in the pregnancy. In giving parental rights to the man, Italy has joined Germany in recognizing a three-parent family — two legal fathers and one mother — for the child.

Attorney Pasqua Manfredi told Reuters, "There was no secret surrogacy deal here, this is a case of three people who all want to be the parents of this child, and the court ‌recognised this." It's the first time a court has validated such an arrangement in Italy, and legal experts say it has the potential to reshape Italy's approach to same-sex parenting.

Pro Vita & Famiglia, a Catholic organization, said legalizing same-sex marriage has "upended family law, exposing minors to all kinds of social and ideological experimentations."

Zoom Out:

Research from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that young children who live in homes with one or more unrelated adults are nearly 50 times more likely to die from an inflicted injury such as physical abuse compared to children who live with both of their biological parents. Most often, the adult is the boyfriend of the child's mother.

“I've seen many cases of physical and sexual abuse that come up with boyfriends, stepparents,” said Eliana Gil, clinical director for the national abuse-prevention group Child Help.

“It comes down to the fact they don't have a relationship established with these kids,” she said. “Their primary interest is really the adult partner, and they may find themselves more irritated when there's a problem with the children.''

Another concern is that this ruling will open the door to further manipulation of the biological reality that each child has two biological parents. States like California, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, and Florida allow more than two parents to be legally recognized on a birth certificate. In some cases, children are conceived via IVF with either no true knowledge about which man in a gay couple is the biological father, and then there are cases involving donor eggs or sperm and IVF.

There is also the use of Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy (MRT) in which the egg of the intended mother and a donor egg are both fertilized with the father’s sperm, and then the nuclear DNA is removed from both, with the nucleus from the intended mother's embryo put into the donor mother's embryo. This process creates two human embryos, destroys them both, and merges them to create a third embryo with DNA from three adults in order to prevent a genetic health condition or to combat age-related infertility. Research shows that 54.8% of embryos created this way had the wrong number of chromosomes.

The Bottom Line:

Adults' desires should never be put ahead of children's rights. Children have a right to know, be loved by, and be raised by their biological parents. Those who are raised by their married, biological parents have better educational and emotional outcomes than those who aren't.